Categories

Meta

Fingers Crossed!

You can hardly access the internet nowadays without coming across a new road safety campaign. This is good to see as there’s a lot of people killed an injured on our roads. Safety campaigns will make things better.

Safety campaigns are funny old things. You’d *expect* them to focus on those doing the most harm. After all, it’s a complete and utter waste of time targeting pedestrians and cyclists and other victims of road violence, these people can’t stop other people driving into them can they?

What I’d *expect* to see is posters telling drivers “STOP KILLING PEOPLE YOU STUPID BASTARDS!!!” And I don’t really mind if it upsets the drivers who drive carefully because it’s saving lives, see.

You’d *think*, wouldn’t you? But no. Bizarrely, quite a lot of road safety campaigns tell the people getting killed and injured that they really need to look out for themselves. Quite how the campaign groups achieve this without it sounding like a veiled threat is actually rather impressive but they certainly do a good job.

Dress like a railway worker, or you’ll get hit by a car because drivers can’t be expected to see perfectly visible people.

There’s also a running theme to encourage people to share the road and respect each other because it’s a two way street. Cyclists are, after all, always killing drivers. Or something.

It’s not uncommon for these campaigns to be supported by car manufacturers for some reason that’s not entirely clear other than an obvious acceptance that the users of their products are hopeless fuckwits.

Things must be better with all this safety being pushed out to unprotected humans moving about on 30lb, self-propelled vehicles, mustn’t it? Is it, chuff. Because no matter how much you tell cyclists to make themselves be seen and make sure people can see them or to wear a plastic hat, there’s still an issue that is being left out there. It’s these huge metal boxes that keep hitting people and killing them. Huge metal boxes being operated by other humans.

Now if you think these humans go about their business in a dangerous manner *until* they see a poster telling them to behave, you’re a jolly naive individual. If you think people are going to start looking and caring about people not in a car simply because they see a TV advert warning them of the hazards of not doing so, you’re a bit daft.

“Oh, bugger me, I’ve been driving like a complete tool for the last ten years and that poster showing a car giving some room to a cyclist has made me change my ways”

If you think you can educate bad drivers, you’re in a little cloud because these campaigns have been run for years and years and they make

absolutely

fuck

all

difference.

But I’m not going to let that stop me. You see, I’m going to start my own safety campaign. This will have the same effect as all the other safety campaigns so that’s good. My campaign, like many others, doesn’t bother telling the people doing the harm to sort themselves out, it’s entirely focused on the people suffering. Hopefully I’ll get sponsorship from Ford or someone. Volvo seem quite keen on blaming the people their customers kill, I’ll try a pitch there. But for now, onto the campaign.

Behold! The ‘Fingers Crossed’ campaign.

Looking to get home tonight? Fingers crossed you will.

Hoping you’ll see your family again? Fingers crossed you will.

Like having the usual number of arms and legs and heads? Fingers crossed they’ll still be there this time tomorrow.

It also comes in hi viz.

This campaign will be hugely successful for a great many reasons.

For a start it will achieve 100% of absolutely fuck all just like all the other campaigns. It costs nothing, and more importantly, it costs nothing to drivers. It’s quite simple in that it places all the onus on the victims of road violence, I mean, no-one driving badly is going to be crossing their fingers are they? That would be unsafe. Once someone has driven over someone else they can quickly point out that the victim didn’t have their fingers crossed so they were asking for it. It gives hope where there is none.

I’ve run out of benefits now but that’s not going to stop me either. I’m currently designing shirts to push the message out there.

“Fingers crossed you don’t drive into me”

“Please don’t kill me, my fingers are crossed”

And this will no doubt have as much impact on road safety as everything else because targeting the vulnerable is a sure fire way of stopping the strong and powerful from continuing to cause harm.

Stay tuned for updates particularly where we link up with our sister safety campaigns, “Pray to Jesus” and “If I don’t tell my wife I’m shitting myself, maybe I’ll see her tonight”